


Subjective Truth

by katie_m



Category: Charlie Jade (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:10:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katie_m/pseuds/katie_m
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees, which are falsehoods on the other." --Blaise Pascal</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subjective Truth

**Author's Note:**

> A missing scene for episode 6, "Dirty Laundry."
> 
> Written for gwyneth rhys

 

 

I like to think of myself as a courageous man. I face things that most people don't like to think about, I investigate possibilities most people discard, and I persevere through what can be some pretty stiff resistance, not to mention the ridicule. I may even have described myself as a warrior for the truth once upon a time, though the older, wiser Karl Lubinsky would never admit to that.

I wanted the truth for Themba Makandi, who's been an inspiration to me ever since his first great organizing campaign, my introduction to South Africa. I wanted the truth for Ziza, and for Nomzamo and Dingane, when they're old enough to hear it. I wanted the truth for myself. And I've got to admit, it scared the hell out of me when Charlie's response to the whole concept of "the truth" was that flatly disbelieving look. Shouldn't he get the concept? I mean, the man is a private investigator. What the hell does he do, if not... investigate? What is that world of his like?

I decided pretty quickly after the dry cleaner--the place masquerading as a dry cleaner--exploded, that I wasn't going to stick around. Seemed like it'd be a bad idea to stay; it's not easy to explain why you happened to be pointing a camera at something right when it blew up, or at least I imagine it isn't, given previous experiences with less dramatic events. _I told you so_ rarely goes over well with people who are looking for a perpetrator. So I told Charlie I'd meet him back at the apartment and made a break for it, backing the car down the alley and out onto the street at a pretty good clip.

I got home, and I waited. Waited. Waited some more. Called his cell and got voicemail, Charlie's voice, curt, "Leave a message." Hung up before the beep; he'd come back or he wouldn't, he'd call or he wouldn't, and nothing I did would make a difference either way.

He'd said Themba Makandi was dead. If the explosion hadn't been as destructive as it seemed, if somehow Charlie had found a way home to his own world, I'd never know what he'd found. And what did it say about me, that I was more worried about that than about the man who was a guest beneath my roof?

Maybe it was just that I knew by then that Charlie could take care of himself. That maybe I didn't always want to know how he did it.

I ended up asleep on the couch, on Charlie's couch, with the lights still on. When I woke with a start to the sound of a key in the door, it was just before dawn, and the sparrows in the eaves were shrieking tunelessly. After a moment of fumbling--there was a trick to the lock that he still hadn't quite gotten--Charlie slipped through the door, closing and locking it behind him. I'd told him when he moved in that I wanted him to keep the door locked, and he'd looked at me like I'd suggested he might want to flush the toilet after using it. He liked deadbolts, he'd told me later. Simple, sturdy, hard to override from outside without breaking down the door. Not fancy, but they got the job done.

"I gotta shower," he said, without looking up.

"Wait," I said, swinging my legs over the side of the couch to sit. When I looked at him more closely, I could see the soot on his hands. "You went back to the dry cleaner?"

He leaned back against the door, arms crossed, body language closed. He gets like that a lot. I've had plenty of practice with suspicious interviewees, but Charlie's one of the tougher ones I've dealt with. For once, though, he relented without any pressure from me. "Yeah. Figured it was worth a shot. Couldn't get in until the fire was out, and then the police started looking at me sideways, so I split. Looks like the place is a total loss."

"I think I saw Boxer," I offered. "I got a picture, for all the good it does us."

Charlie snorted. "Us. Yeah. Speaking of which..." He reached into his jacket and pulled out a pair of glasses. Heavy-rimmed. Just like Themba's. He tossed them to me underhand, and I fumbled them out of the air just in time to keep them from smacking me in the face. "You can check the prescription, right? You do keep records of that kind of thing?"

"Yes, of course," I said, most of my attention on the glasses. "This is it? This is all you found? Even if they are Makandi's, he could have lost them, or--"

"That and a whole lot of blood," Charlie replied. "Piles of personal effects. Looks like Regrow was running an organ harvesting operation. They booked it out of there after I showed up asking questions, but they didn't do a thorough cleanup job."

I tightened my grip on the glasses in my hand. "But you're not sure," I said. "You didn't see a body."

Charlie shrugged. "I saw enough. You want to take down Regrow, you rev up your little website and start typing. But I'm telling you, they had a chop shop operation there and they killed him for parts. You wanted the truth? There it is."

"I'll track them down," I said, taking note of his dismissive attitude and putting it aside. Another thing I was used to. Besides, there was no point in taking it personally; Charlie was dismissive of everything in this universe except for the coffee and the views. "We can find out for sure."

"Yeah," Charlie said, sardonically. "There's that _we_ again. Is everyone here this obsessive about getting answers, or is it just you?"

I set the glasses down on one of the piles of paper stacked beside the couch and levered myself to my feet, frustrated. "It's a human thing, Charlie. It's--" I grasped for a way to explain it to him. "Did you have apartheid, where you came from? The official system?"

"Sure," he said, pushing off from the door and wandering over to the desk to flip through a notebook. Putting distance between us. "Ended about the time I was born. The Companies decided it was bad for the economy."

That wasn't the answer I'd expected, but I forged ahead anyway. "After it ended here, the government set up a commission. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission." I'd still been living in Canada then, traveling to South Africa once a year to do the work I really wanted to do. I'd followed the hearings through calls from friends and scraps of information off of the BBC World Service. "Everyone could come, people who'd been hurt, people who'd done the hurting, and tell the truth about what had happened. That way people could..." I trailed off, searching for the right words. "Move on. People had to know what had really happened, understand it, before they could move on."

"And now everyone's everyone's friend and it's all strawberries and sunny days, right?"

Charlie fixed me with that look of his, the I-know-better look, and I had to look away for a moment before meeting his gaze. This was an old argument for me, and I'd decided what I thought about it long ago. "It's better. It's better to know, even if knowing doesn't mean you get what you want. Charlie--even if there wasn't any way back for you, wouldn't you want to know that? To know what Vexcor's doing? To know why?"

"I find out there's no way back, I'm taking the next flight to somewhere warm and spending some quality time with a pitcher of margaritas," he said. I doubted that, but let it slide. He slapped the notebook closed and pushed past me, heading for the bathroom. "I'm gonna shower. You do whatever you want to do, but let me give you a little piece of advice. You ever end up in my world, I don't recommend you go on this kind of truth kick. And you get yourself killed doing it in this one, all I'll say at the funeral is I told you so."

He disappeared down the hall, and a moment later I heard the water come on. I glanced behind me at the glasses--Themba's glasses?--then at the desk, and the phone that was waiting there. It was barely six in the morning, and I hadn't even tried looking into Regrow yet, and... it was too early to call Ziza. Much too early.

Maybe I'd try her later in the day. 

 


End file.
